Jordan Kobritz

Archive - June 2013

The Oakland A’s are having a difficult time finding their way to San Jose, but the city proved last week that it’s willing to help pave the way.
After waiting four years while a committee appointed by MLB Commissioner Bud Selig “analyzed” the A’s request to move to San Jose, the city elected to place the decision in the court’s hands. Not surprisingly, MLB doesn’t think they will be successful. Rob Manfred, MLB’s executive vice president for economics and league affairs, said “…the city has resorted to litigation that has no basis in law or in fact.” Unfortunately for San Jose, Manfred’s comments weren’t far off the mark.

If you want intrigue, drama and dueling press conferences, forget the latest “trial of the century.” All you have to do is tune in to the latest episode of the soap opera, “As the Yankees-Alex Rodriguez Relationship Turns.”
A-Rod is one of the most polarizing athletes on the planet. He was the number one draft pick of the Seattle Mariners out of high school and after a brief sojourn in the minors, became the consensus best player in the American League, if not all of baseball. As soon as free agency rolled around, Texas Rangers owner Tom Hicks bestowed the richest contract in baseball history on A-Rod, 10-years and $252 million. After Hicks realized it took more than one player to win in a team sport, he shipped Rodriguez off to the Yankees with seven years remaining on his outlandish contract.

E. Gordon Gee, the president of Ohio State University, is by all accounts a brilliant man. In addition to serving his second term as president of OSU, he has also led Vanderbilt University, Brown University and the Universities of West Virginia and Colorado. According to an article in Time, Gee is the best college president in the country. But not for long; Gee will leave his position on July 1.
Gee claims to be stepping down voluntarily, and in deference to his many contributions to OSU during almost 15 years as its president, he was allowed to “resign.” But the timing of the announcement, and the fact he gave the university less than thirty days to find a replacement when a year is the norm, suggests that Gee’s penchant for placing both feet in his mouth when he speaks has made him a liability that OSU is only too happy to shed.

You have to hand it to Bud Selig. The sometimes beleaguered MLB Commissioner, who is known for making decisions methodically, if at all, has been decidedly aggressive of late in an attempt to rid baseball of performance enhancing drugs. How Selig fares in his personal war on drugs may determine the commissioner’s legacy as he prepares to leave office at the end of 2014 when his current term is up.
MLB’s latest salvo against PEDs began earlier this year when they brought suit against Tony Bosch, the former Miami clinic he owned, Biogenesis of America, and a number of other company officials. Although Bosch held himself out as a “Dr.,” he was nothing more than a quack, a small-time drug dealer who operated out of a run-down storefront in a low rent strip mall. His claim to fame was a connection to athletes, primarily baseball players, due to his location in South Florida. After an alternative newspaper in Miami broke the story of Bosch’s dealings with athletes, including such notables as the Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez, who lives in Miami, and the Brewers’ Ryan Braun, who attended the University of Miami, MLB sprang into action.

Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game? by Jimmy Breslin.
Jimmy Breslin's book chronicles the saga of the New York Mets' inaugural season in 1962. The team lost 120 of 160 games and is considered the worst major league baseball team of all time. In the book’s introduction, Bill Veeck, the greatest promoter in baseball history who knew a thing or two about losers, wrote that Breslin preserved “for all time a remarkable tale of ineptitude, mediocrity, and abject failure."
Breslin took the book’s title from a quote by Casey Stengel, the Mets manager who oversaw a group of characters that were cast as lovable losers. Casey himself will be remembered more for overseeing the ragtag Mets than for his ten American League titles and seven World Series championships in twelve years as manager of the cross-borough New York Yankees.